Month: October 2013

Assumptions are filters through which we see the world. With too much information flowing past us and too many decisions to make on most days, we do a very human thing which is to assume.

As assumption is like a mental shortcut. It allows us to move forward without doing all the detailed work. This makes a lot of sense most of the time.

Sometime however assumptions can cause real problems. Like in an environment where misunderstanding can have high costs. I remember my flying instructor explaining how we do radio calls to the control tower at Cape Town International airport.

A quick piece of context here is that we were flying in a two seater Cessna and were using the same runway as the local and international Boeing’s and Airbuses. His line which has always stuck with me is that if we assume something in this situation we are at risk or making an-ass-of-u-and-me.

In business making assumptions is a key part of being entrepreneurial and growing a business. If we spend too much time analysing, we don’t ever get out the door. To get out the door we need to make some assumptions.

The deceptive thing about assumptions is that if we have made them once and they worked out, then we are likely to feel more confident the next time when making a similar assumption. This has been the downfall of many a business person who has been very successful in one area and tried to do exactly the same in another without checking their assumptions. Michael Jordan attempting to play baseball for the Chicago White Sox is also an example of this.

Blackberry’s challenges over the past years is a modern day example of assumptions gone wrong. Coming from the success that RIM and now Blackberry had, dominating the business smartphone market for all those years, it must have been hard for them not to assume that they would continue to dominate.

Their assumption was that an iPhone was impossible back in 2007 when it was announced. A former employee of Blackberry revealed that the assumption internally was that what Apple were promising in the iPhone could not work. Imagine the panic when they realised that they were wrong. They have been playing catch up ever since.

It is hard to be at the top of your game and then have someone join in who changes the rules to your disadvantage. Assuming it will never happen in a world where technology changes as fast as it does is perhaps a little naive. Andy Grove of Intel took his distrust of assumptions to an extreme level by calling his autobiography, ‘Only the paranoid survive’.

Blackberry’s current roll out of Blackberry Messenger (BBM) to iPhone and Android is looking like further poor assumptions. From the outside we can only guess at the impact giving BBM away free to their competitors will do for their floundering business.

Internally Blackberry must have made a couple of assumptions that look something like this:

Keeping BBM proprietary to Blackberry will sentence it to obsolescence on a shrinking client base,

Bearing (1) in mind, people other than the dwindling Blackberry population, will use BBM if it is available for free; and

BBM available free on the competitor iPhone and Android platforms will be good for the Blackberry business.

Supposing I am correct about the assumptions above, then it is clear that this is a delicate situation for Blackberry. Perception has changed about Blackberry’s ability to deliver a popular smartphone. This is reflected in its market share of 4% at the end of August (against iPhone’s 40.7% and Android’s 51.6%), a fraction of the 20% they held in 2009 (source Gartner).

This makes the manner in which they have rolled out BBM disappointing. This included delivery in late October despite aiming for early September, mixed messages from their partner Samsung, no communication to people who have indicated interest and when it did arrive on my iPhone the only thing the app does is to say that I am in a queue to get it later. Really?

Perhaps there is an assumption that the whole world is anxiously awaiting BBM. This may be the case or it may be that many people like me are wanting it to stay in contact with the handful of people close to them who still insist on staying with Blackberry. I hope for Blackberry’s sake that when it does actually arrive it is a strong contender for WhatsApp and paid for text messages.

My physiotherapist on a visit this afternoon said, “I can’t believe it is already October.”

My father regularly shakes his head in dismay that another year has passed.

I remember my childhood friend Carol asking her mother, ‘Which corner?’ after being told that Christmas was just around the corner. Everyone laughed at the naivety of a child thinking about time in a way different to months, weeks, hours and minutes.

But is it really naive? Is time really fixed or can we think about time in ways other than what the clock tells us?

Here are some challenging thoughts about time:

Why do some events feel like they have flown past while others last an eternity even though they have taken similar amounts of time?

How come when we really decide to do something like go to gym regularly, the time opens up and we manage it even though it felt impossible before?

Why do tax returns take longer to fill out than visa applications for a desired holiday?

Why does the first day away on holiday feel so timeless and the last day before we leave feel so lacking in enough time?

Does time really go slower when we are anxiously awaiting something?

Or more specifically, does a watched kettle really never boil?

Author Bondil Jonsson observes how the arrival of measured, accurate timekeeping became first our tool, and then our master.

As with everything we all have a relationship with time. Some are better than others. Is time our friend or our enemy?

Can time be used masterfully? For many business people, the constraint of time drives us to achieve more in less. Conversely creating open space, time with no expectations, allows creativity to be fuelled.

For the past seven years I have taught a course on strategic thinking to students at the University of Cape Town. I ended up doing this by accident.

Prof John Simpson, well known for starting and leading the UCT Unilever Institute of Strategic Marketing was the previous convenor of the course and asked me to help him out after a guest lecture I did on the changes we were navigating in our startup bank.

With the Prof’s wanting to focus on the Unilever Institute after his retirement, I took over the convening of the course a few years later.

I was intrigued to bring together my business experience of strategy and the academic world of strategy. I started on a steep learning curve attempting to create an environment where final year Business Science students could think more strategically about the business world that lay ahead.

The students come predominantly from a finance background (60%) which is roughly split in half between those aiming to become CA’s and those not. The next biggest segment is marketers and then actuaries, organisational psychologists and a handful of people majoring in technology.

I quickly identified three significant challenges that I faced in teaching the class.

Students adopt a strategy of getting to the other side of exams with as many marks and as little work as possible.

The text books are more suited to academics than to preparing students to be strategic thinkers.

The education system encourages the finding of ‘right answers’ over asking useful questions.

The first item is a possibly a universal given for any student.

The second I addressed by replacing a single text book with selected readings from contemporary journals and books covering a wide range of topics related to thinking strategically.

The third I decided to take on as a challenge which still engages me.

My experience of working in my own business and working with many large and small organisations over the past 25 years has confirmed that there are few easy answers in the world of strategy. Leaders who are seeking a single answer to a strategic challenge are possibly naive or missing the point.

The problem with strategy, is that we do not know how the future will play out and despite our best guesses, plans or budgets, to think otherwise is irrational.

So rather than look for an answer to this dilemma, a good question offers many nuances that are useful to our thinking process. Open and insightful, a question which challenges our thinking can lead us on a much more useful thought process than spending our time trying to find the single correct answer.

While a question is the start of this process, an answer often signals to us that we have reached the end and can stop looking. This finality, while tempting, can be fatal for a business person on the way up or at the pinnacle of success.

Questions and answers are of course linked. However we need to resist jumping to answers before we have spent enough time on the question.

Anyone who has tried to implement the suggestions in a business advice book will confirm there are no model answers in business.

We have more chance of success by getting clear on the question. By refining it and polishing it and allowing ourselves the indulgence of thinking deeply over a period of time, new possibilities can open up.

In a world with all information available to mostly everyone all the time, the opportunity for eureka moments is long gone.

Our challenge comes in navigating information, making connections, synthesising and integrating. A good question is a great pilot for this navigation.

And to my students frustrated by the lack of clearly defined answers in the world of strategic thinking, here are some questions.

How can you engage in the practice of strategic thinking?

How have the answers you have arrived at been tested by insightful questions?

Despite it seldom being very constructive we do get feedback all the time.

It may be the rejection of our proposal or the pat on the back for a job well done.

It’s worth thinking how best to receive feedback so that it is useful.

The first critical rule is to simply say thank you, whether the feedback is good or bad.

We may ask for some more clarity. If however we feel the need to explain why it is like it is, justifying the feedback that we have just received, then alarm bells should go off in our head.

This is a road to nowhere. Firstly because the person giving the feedback seldom cares and secondly because it activates our own biases to protect us from what is really going on. Thirdly, a poor reaction to feedback will guarantee we don’t get further feedback from that person.

If the feedback elicits an emotional response (anger, fury, a warm glow), then even more reason to do nothing with it until some time has passed. Once the emotion has calmed, then a few further questions are useful:

How do I interpret this feedback?

Does it confirm any other feedback or hunches I have about how I am doing?

Why did this person give me this feedback now?

What agenda, if any, does the person giving me feedback have?

Are there things I should be doing differently as a result of this feedback?